ISRAEL PREPARES ANOTHER INVASIONBehind Bibi's latest moves to wipe out Hamas on the ground
Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu and his far-right supporters have made it clear that the nearly two million Gazans who were caught in the war that Hamas triggered eighteen months ago were never a subject of concern to the Israeli leadership as it began its round-the-clock bombing in response to the October 7 attack. They were just collateral damage. Israel remains unabashed and is ready to begin another round of retribution. On March 18 Netanyahu broke the terms of a ceasefire with Hamas by authorizing a series of Israeli airstrikes that killed an estimated four hundred Gazans. The prime minister claimed, falsely, that he did so because Hamas had refused to unilaterally release more Israeli hostages. His goal was to take the war directly to the estimated twenty to twenty-five thousand surviving Hamas fighters still in Gaza, many operating in isolation or in small units, armed only with pistols and rifles. Desperate to stay in office, Netanyahu assured his people after October 7 that Hamas would “pay an unprecedented price” for killing more than twelve hundred Israelis and capturing 251 hostages. He meant what he said, but he and the Israeli public did not expect that Hamas would not yet be totally defeated while more than fifty thousand Gazans, the majority of them women and children, would become fatal victims of Israeli air and ground attacks. Those numbers could be much greater and do not account for the many injured and suffering psychological trauma after constant bombing and deprivation of food, clean water, housing, and basic health care. International sympathy for the murdered and injured Gazans quickly eroded support for the Israeli air war as the civilian death toll mounted but the bombing was unrelenting, Hamas hung in, despite a loss of leadership, lack of supplies, and the destruction of its underground network of tunnels that had provided some security and safety. Early Israeli promises of quick victory were backed by thousands of air strikes on the homes and institutions of Gaza, but the war carried on. Now there is a new promise from Netanyahu, who has turned to those inside Israel who still welcome him—the extreme far right, composed of religious zealots who have set the West Bank on fire and have ambitions of turning the north of Gaza, whose citizens are once again being driven south, into a land of settlers. He will give the zealots what they want, and they in turn will do their part to keep him in office. It is a marriage made over broken bodies. And now the Israeli Defense Forces, whose mid-level officer leadership is also dominated—or close to it—by religious zealots, is going to be ordered back into Gaza. It is projected to be a war waged house to house, tunnel to tunnel, in shootouts. Netanyahu’s goal is to hunt down and kill the remaining thousands of Hamas fighters. Call it an extermination operation. I’ve seen no estimates of projected IDF casualties, amid estimates that as many as five divisions of Israeli troops and reservists—possibly many more—will go once again to war on the ground. There are ten thousand troops in an IDF division. Israel’s war in Gaza hardly paused during the broken ceasefire. Israeli troops have been increasingly present in Gaza and the West Bank, and targeted killings, especially of Arab journalists, have steadily intensified in both zones. But it must be noted that Israel, despite its overwhelming ground forces, unchallenged air power, and a steady supply of US bombs and other munitions, could not win the war. And so Netanyahu will try again. President Donald Trump, after a brief flurry of speculation about Gaza as a potential site for a beach resort—if only the Gazans were somehow transported elsewhere and Saudi Arabia and Gulf states would support reconstruction, which they declined to do—seems to have lost interest in the area, although his administration still supports the Netanyahu government with bombs, munitions, and rhetoric. I recently asked an Israeli who has fought and bled for Israel and cannot help but wish for the long gone days when Israel was united in a desire for domestic peace that included a vibrant role for its Arab citizens, what he thought of today’s Israel under the leadership of Netanyahu. He replied: “Israel is so intractable because there is no one ‘Israel’ any longer. There are at least three Israels. Until Bibi this was also the case, but there was a hegemony of a strong core of two opposing camps—the Begin/Shamir Right vs. the Rabin/Peres Left—but both were for the preservation of the balance between the judiciary, the legislature, and the executive. Since Bibi, no more. We are becoming an Arab state or Hungary or Russia. The executive wants to be all, and to achieve it they are destroying the fragile Jewish common denominator. Headed by a brilliant Ashkenazi manipulator, they are turning Moroccan Jews against the Ashkenazi Jews, with Iraqi Syrian, Libyan, Tunisian, Yemenite, and Egyptian Jews in the middle They are also showering gold on parasitic ultra-orthodox (mostly Askenazis) in a war era to secure their support. This is exacerbating the conflict.” A well-informed American official with experience in Israel reminded me recently that he had predicted at the outset of the war that the Israelis, under Netanyahu’s leadership, “would not stop until all of Hamas was dead. The cease fires were ruses of war to draw Hamas fighters out of hiding. They were dead men walking, which they are. Bibi wanted to get as many hostages out by pretending settlement, but now that ploy has run its course. What happens to the Gazans is dependent on the rich Arabs. [He was referring to the dim possibility that Saudi Arabis and some of the Gulf states would supply the funds needed to find a new home for the survivors in Gaza.] We are going to watch and wait until Hamas is no more, then step in to ameliorate the suffering, but not until the Israelis decide it’s over. I say Israelis, not Bibi, but say what you will about his character, the nation of Israel is speaking with one political voice and would do so whatever party and leader was running the show.” I had already discovered that many Israelis would support their government in the crisis—some with much reluctance when it comes to Netanyahu himself—in prior talks with senior Israelis with years of military and government experience. A retired senior IDF officer was quick both to be critical of Netanyahu and supportive of continuing the war against Hamas. “As I see it,” he told me, Netanyahu “needs Hamas to exist, so he will be able to continue the war forever. The war drums drown criticisms of his robbing our budget, of traitors in his office, his sons wallowing in champagne abroad, you name it. The problem for me [is that] Hamas is very dangerous, so when we kill twenty of its leaders again, I cannot be 100 per cent against it. This is why the military, Shabak [a common local phrase for Shin Bet, the internal security service], and Mossad approved of the new offensive. He is exploiting it, but the [remaining] hostages will die. This goes against the very core of Israeli values.” The officer made it clear that he has little sympathy for the plight of the Gazans. “I am of course for stopping the war, but for a different reason: this is the only way to get our hostages. The Gazans deserve everything they got. No genocide, though. I hope you know there was none. They have been educating their babies to slaughter us or die, or to slaughter us and die. Marauding Jihad and martyrdom have been their highlights at all levels of education. Hating the Gazans, all of then, intensely, is the only common denominator between me, a liberal in my own eyes, and [Bezalel] Smotrich [the far right Treasury Secretary of Israel, who advocates annexing the West Bank and occupying Gaza]. What to do about it is where there is nothing in common between us. “The Gaza Strippers are the ultimate enemy, all of them Islamo-Nazis of the worst kind. Their children are Islamo-Nazi Hitlerjugend [Hitler Youth] fighting in Berlin, 1945, for their Führer in the collapsing, burning rubble. But we are not Nazis, and our duty is to find a way to change. You [Americans] did it from 1945 to 1950, and present-day Germany is no Nazi Berlin any longer. The West Bankers are no friends but not the same as Gazans. Many Arabs are ready for co-existence. Maybe even the Jihadist al-Julani Shaara”—the former ISIS commander who is now head of Syria. The officer’s last words were said in obvious irony, for he knows, as do many in the world, that any resolution to the Arab-Israeli crisis is a long way off. If the intolerant Israel of Benjamin Netanyahu and his extremist colleagues remains ascendent, it may never come to be. But now the Arab world, confronted for decades with a nuclear-armed Israel, is stirring. Nuclear power plants will soon be coming to Saudi Arabia, if the leadership there has its way, and Israel may find itself without exclusive possession in the region of that fearsome deterrent. Invite your friends and earn rewardsIf you enjoy Seymour Hersh, share it with your friends and earn rewards when they subscribe. © 2025 Seymour Hersh |